SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — When you’re a boy at a ballpark, sitting on an oversized seat that feels more like a throne, you don’t watch baseball as much as you soak it in.

Before he was Tulo, before he was a chant, he was Troy, a boy. And his California family would drive over to watch the Oakland A’s, the true Bay Area giants.

And while Troy Tulowitzki soaked up the aura of Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, sluggers’ sluggers, “I always had a liking for shortstops,” Tulo explained Wednesday in the Rockies’ clubhouse. “So I watched Walt Weiss growing up a lot, so there’s no doubt that I watched plenty of his games. It’s kind of cool that I’m playing under him.”

For the transcendent Tulo to take the next step — from all-star to superstar, from the cellar to back in the postseason — he must emulate his manager. My fear is that Tulo will get disillusioned with playing in Denver this summer if the team struggles, and he’ll be like the cool guy in the dorky fraternity, wishing he was a member of the big house down frat row.

He must lead the team in grinding, the skill that kept the wiry Weiss in the bigs for 14 seasons.

I had a nice chat with Tulo, and while he says “talk is cheap,” he did gush about grinding: “Anytime you’re a baseball player, you’re going to have to learn how to grind, just because the game is so difficult. Any successful player in this game usually is a grinder, knows how to deal with ups and downs. And Walt’s a tough guy, meaning he’s a no-nonsense guy, class act, someone who I’m sure was a great teammate, a great leader. There’s a lot of respect not just from me, but from different guys in this locker room.”

Dick Monfort, the Rockies’ owner, expressed to some local writers last fall, “I’m hopeful that Tulo, now that Todd (Helton) is gone, is going to step it up. … He’s getting more engaged with the younger guys. Before, all he was worried about was Tulo. ‘Yeah we won 8-2, but I went 0-for-3. The guy has matured.’ “

Tulo told me that when he was younger, he tried to be perfect, so when, gosh forbid, he slumped it could be overwhelming. He now tells younger players to accept there will be bumps in the road, even for the best players, and what counts is how quickly you snap out of it.

Regarding leadership, baseball is not football. Sure, you have the occasional pump-up speech, such as that of David Ortiz in the 2013 World Series, but as reigning batting champ Michael Cuddyer said: “You don’t get up for one three-hour game and try to knock peoples’ heads in. You can’t sustain that energy for 162 games.”

Leadership in baseball is an equation — success plus actions. The catch is, if a guy has success but his actions are me-first or immature, these negative qualities are powerful and can permeate the clubhouse.

Tulo is going to hit well because he’s Tulo. But he needs to showcase this “why not us” stuff that the Avalanche has going. He needs to make his teammates truly believe that he’s not Derek Jeter’s heir apparent with the Yankees; that he’s the guy who will lead Colorado to important games this September, and maybe, by 2015, in October.

Grinding can lead to glamour.

“(Weiss) played the game hard, played the game smart. He’s as tough a guy as you can possibly imagine, and that’s the kind of thing we’re trying to breed in here,” Cuddyer said. “I think we saw that as a unit last year, when things started going south after the all-star break, he still believed in us, he never abandoned ship or started pointing fingers at the players — and that speaks a lot to the players. When you have a manager and a coaching staff like that, and players too, you can feed off each other.”

Benjamin Hochman was a sports columnist for The Denver Post until August 2015 before leaving for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, his hometown newspaper. Hochman previously worked for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for its Hurricane Katrina coverage. Hochman wrote the Katrina-themed book “Fourth and New Orleans,” published in 2007.